


Myself Away From Me

by Effybean



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Depression, Eating Disorders, Happy Ending, M/M, Minor Angst, Trigger Warning: Eating Disorders, What am I doing, a touch of mystrade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 20:31:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3222479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Effybean/pseuds/Effybean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is trying to sleep. Instead he thinks about food, and John, and food some more. This started as a prompt from the gorgeous and amazing DistantStarlight and then it kind of just...this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Myself Away From Me

**Author's Note:**

> I had a prompt. Said prompt went like this:  
> Eating Disorder Sherlock where he hates food unless John makes it for him. When John moves in Sherlock realizes he's feeling better and sleeping easier because of John's cooking abilities.
> 
> I tried to stick to it, but this is what happened instead??? 
> 
> Trigger warnings do apply for severely eating disordered thinking.
> 
> Also, apologies for the formatting. It seems AO3 is too clever for me, and I can't seem to get it right. Ugh. 
> 
> Title comes from this lovely song, I suggest you listen to it:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSa1VtZhx2g

Sherlock was actually trying to sleep, which was a rare occurrence for him. He was trying to do something that would lead to a mindless oblivion, and as drugs were out, sleep was the next best thing. He scratched lightly at his ribcage, running his fingers over the protrusions they caused. Sleep. Yes, sleep. Sleep to forget that he was starving.

  
           Starving was easy, that was what people didn't realize. It wasn't difficult to ignore hunger pains until they died down and stopped screaming. It was, in fact, pleasurable. Sherlock would never admit it, but the pleasure it gave him was part of the reason his body was so disassociated from his mind. If it felt so good to deny it, why did people indulge so obsessively?

           Refusing to admit things was his M.O, and unfortunately a huge problem, according to Mycroft (meddling twat). When the fat, ginger lump went off to uni and Sherlock discovered just how lonely it was to be the cleverest one in the room, he had discovered that loneliness wasn't a problem when there was hunger to feed on. He got away with it for a grand total of two months before he was taken to his first therapist, an ex-punk with a worsening alcohol addiction and five cats. Pointing those facts out got him out of that appointment, but after that came the ephebophile that had just begun a sexual relationship with a boy Sherlock's age. Then came the heroin addict, then the serial adulteress, and the icing on the cake, the black widow. Most of these things weren't bothersome to Sherlock- after all, they were all so disgustingly human, what could one expect? But he didn't want to be there, and so like any other teenager, he fought it. Only unlike ordinary teenagers and their fit throwing, he just continued to starve and deduced his way out. Easy peasy.

          Easy. He ate enough to convince mummy ad father that he was fine, he was healthy, it had been a phase, yes everything is fine, and the issue was buried. Mycroft had not been around enough while it was an "Issue" (with a capital I) so he had't been able to stick his abnormally large nose in to sniff out Sherlock's lies. He wasn't around enough to notice his baby brother's deteriorating condition in Uni, or in his mid 20's, he wasn't around until a prematurely graying Detective Sergeant found him ODing in an alley, convinced he was on fire despite the frigid December temperatures. Suddenly, Mycroft was around. Infuriatingly so. All the time. Checking in while Sherlock was detoxing, putting cameras in places they had no right being, telling his little puppy of a DS to raid Sherlock's flat for drugs, and being all around insufferable. He also refused to back down, unlike mummy and father had. This could partially be due to the difference in a fourteen year old restricting his food intake apparently for attention and a twenty-eight year old OD'ing on a stimulant and refusing to eat anything with more than 20 calories in a serving.

  
        The demons Sherlock had happily been riding for twelve years were exposed, and he was mid free fall.

  
        Yet here he was, thirty six years old, better by all professional accounts, back from the dead and thriving in doing what he loved. And yet…yet. When he lay in bed at night, he gripped his own hipbones reverently. It calmed him down to touch his bones. He traced his ribs, counted the bones in his chest, pressed bruises into his collarbones. He could only sleep after checking that his bones were still there, that his corporeal form had not rebelled. He wasn't sure why he was still compelled to do this- he was an adult, one whose meddling big brother didn't follow around quite so obsessively anymore, one who convinced everyone that he ate enough and that what he didn't eat slowed down his transport. 

  
        He snorted, turning over in bed and curling into a ball. Transport. He still couldn't believe people fell for that- and they did, over and over. Yes, Mycroft, I'm clean. It's all transport now. No, John, I'm not hungry, my transport doesn't need it.

  
        He was always hungry. He was bloody starving, and John- wonderful, lovely, handsome, brilliant John could feed him. John was his chef and he would never stop eating. John could brush by him and the contact sustained him for hours. Intentional touching was so overwhelming his brain actually went offline for a quarter of a second. The kind of touch he was truly hungry for was out of his reach, even with John now back in his room upstairs, the woman he had married halfway across the world with the child she bore of a different man. No…John was there, and he fed Sherlock little by little, but he still starved him. And Sherlock loathed it. He had starved himself his entire life, never giving in to temptation- it had always been up to him what happened. John turned everything upside down. Sherlock was no longer the one in control of his hunger, because if John gave him that special smile and placed a hand on his shoulder, he was so full he could hardly breathe, and well that was simply not fair.

  
        The kicker was the moment Sherlock realized John wasn't just feeding him metaphorically, but literally, physically. With actual food. Toast with jam in the mornings, shoved in front of him with a smile and a quirked eyebrow. Lunch and tea could be as simple as sandwiches or as involved as roast dinners- apparently his soldier had many talents, and cooking was definitely one of them. And he cooked. And fed Sherlock until his bones weren't as visible, until he had to press harder into his flesh for that comfort. It was terrifying, it was exhilarating, it was lovely. John was lovely. John with his jumpers and his gun and the hair product he wore that smelled like apples. John. John.

  
         When Sherlock Holmes stopped eating at fourteen, he never would have guessed that a small man with a tremor and a psychosomatic limp would be the one to get him to enjoy food again. But here he was, and the starving, lonely teenager screamed and whined and cried, but he was here, with an army doctor and a cozy flat and a life he almost liked.  
He turned over again, punching at his pillow. Almost. He reached down, cupped his hipbones, sighed. He wondered how John was sleeping- the nightmares had been worse since the fallout with Mary. He had already deduced that some of them were about him, which made him painfully uncomfortable, especially since he couldn't do a damn thing to change it. He cringed thinking about what he had put lovely, perfect John through, and found his right hand creeping up to his left collarbone, scratching a familiar rhythm until it began to bleed. This caring thing, it really was not an advantage, Mycroft was right. Not that he had any right to speak, having been thoroughly seduced by Sherlock's Detective Inspector. Their picture of domestic bliss made him ill (jealous), and he wanted nothing (everything) that they had. He groaned, scratching harder. Of course he wanted that. His John fed him. His John made him feel things he never knew it was possible to feel. Things he had only read about. His John was not his.

  
         "Sherlock". He started, covering his eyes as the light in his room flicked on.  
         "John, what-"  
         "I knocked and called your name multiple times. You didn't even notice when I opened the door. You shouted a minute ago, I was worried…." John trailed off. "You're bleeding. You've been scratching again. I thought that had stopped?"  
          Sherlock waved his arm at John in what he hoped was a lazy fashion, as though his body wasn't strung like a wire. "Didn't realize", he grunted. "Just happens sometimes".

  
        John heaved an exaggerated sigh and exited into the loo, coming back a moment later with his kit. "Up", he commanded.  
Sherlock obeyed, slightly unsure about this. It wasn't unusual for John to bandage him up, but never in his bed. It felt much more intimate.  
        "You've got to find a less destructive way to get that anxiety out", John commented as he dabbed something slightly stingy on the wound.  
          "I do not have anxiety", Sherlock protested.  
         "Scratching at your own skin until you bleed would suggest otherwise".  
         "I just do it while I'm thinking".  
         "Thinking anxiously". John capped the bottle and ran a finger over the bandage he had applied, allowing his hand to drift.

         Sherlock couldn't respond, not if someone had held a gun to his head. He had suddenly lost the capability to speak. John had broken him. And he wasn't stopping, his hand trailing up to cup Sherlock's chin. "Did you realize that you talk when you're thinking sometimes? Not the way you talk when you want me to listen, even if I'm not there. You work puzzles out loud, it's quite fascinating really." He leaned in a bit closer. "I had no idea you thought of me as sustenance, though".

  
         Panic flashed through Sherlock a moment before John's lips touched his own, and then everything went blank. He was pretty sure he kissed back, he had to have, surely his body wouldn't betray him and not, but before he could be sure John was taking and pulled his hand away from his collarbone.  
          "How about this. Every time you do something other than hurting yourself when that big brain of yours gets overwhelmed, I'll touch you. Kiss you. Whatever you like. I've been yours for years, Sherlock, it just took me awhile to catch up. But if you keep damaging that beautiful skin, or starving yourself, or if you dare use the needle again, you can bet your arse I'll starve you of touch".

  
        Sherlock tried to say something, but an embarrassing squeak was all he managed. John grinned and leaned forward, crushing their lips together again. When he pulled back, his eyes were glimmering. "I love you, you berk. And to think we've both been feeling it for so long and been too stubborn to do this. Now budge up".  
Sherlock budged, watching as John flicked the light off and then climbed into the bed next to him, easy as that. He turned over, worrying his lip with his teeth. "Is this okay?"

  
        "Oh, god, yes".

  
        For the first time in twenty-two years, Sherlock Holmes fell asleep with his hands curled around someone else, hipbones forgotten, and he didn't feel hungry at all. Starving was easy, but John was easier.

 

  
                           Much easier.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're suffering from an eating disorder, please, please, PLEASE realise that you are not alone, you are loved, and you CAN get help. Try http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/ and http://www.b-eat.co.uk. I can tell you from experience that these disorders can and will ruin lives, and it's not pretty. 
> 
> This was the first fic I wrote in about a decade so be gentle, but obviously comments are very welcome =)


End file.
